Drama of Jealousy

The stellar cast of Monica Vitti, Marcello Mastroianni and Giancarlo Giannini forms the amorous "pizza triangle" of director Ettore Scola’s lively, lusty farce, a tragicomic tale of romantic jealousy, class resentment and overwrought emotions which both pokes fun at and pays tribute to the great cinematic tradition of commedia all’italiana. Antonioni regular Vitti displays her considerable comic gifts as Adelaide, a flower seller unable to choose between rival suitors Oreste (Mastroianni), a communist bricklayer who is already married, and Nello (Wertmüller favourite Giannini), a pizza cook who is Oreste’s best friend. Mastroianni won the Best Actor prize at Cannes for his performance. The script is by the famed Italian screenwriting duo Age and Scarpelli (Big Deal on Madonna Street, Seduced and Abandoned, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).  "An exuberant satire ...Vitti plays with a soulful silliness that is a parody of generations of comic waifs and neorealist heroines...There’s an original comic temperament here" (Pauline Kael). “Indulging in the same overheated histrionics that it attacks...it still manages to be intelligently entertaining, with its eclectic humour and polished performances" (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). Colour, 35mm, in Italian with English subtitles. 107 mins.